Chicken Licken unsafe in Ejigbo

Ideas from mother

I do wonder if those who dare me to write about them on my blog are indirectly asking to be written about. The conversation is usually topical enough to find a few lines of interest. Whatever, the idea sown, until it is executed, it stands alone.

Like this morning, I called to chat to my mother, who answered her phone with strict formality, I had to say, this is your son calling. She was no doubt pranking me as we exchanged greetings and got a message to her that I should have done, a couple of days ago.

Chickens lost and found

During our conversation, we were interrupted by a neighbour who had apparently come round into her compound looking for their chicken, though, I did not ask if it was a cockerel or a hen. Whilst chickens do stray into neighbouring compounds, my mother said two of her chickens never returned home.

One would not want to suggest the neighbours have been chicken-napping, but chickens are intelligent enough to know their way back home except if by happenstance they have met an expected end at the hands of someone else. Chickens that free-range into my mother’s compound are safe from danger, and that is why neighbours can expect to collect their flock if they have strayed there.

There was Chicken Licken

This brought me to the idea of giving one’s poultry names, and though one cannot vouch for the mental capacity of the galline (adjective for chicken) flock to have individual identities, there might be possibilities therein.

It would ensure that when chickens wander off, they can be called by name, just as one would any of the canine kennel and have then cluck and chuck back home long before they are stewing in strange neighbouring pots. Honest neighbours matter, but hungry neighbours make chickens an endangered species.